A Beginner's Guide To King Tubby

A beginner's guide to King Tubby
5/22/15, 12:59 AM
KING TUBBY
(HTTP://WWW.FACTMAG.COM/TAG/KINGTUBBY/)
A
beginners
guide to
King
Tubby,
the
producer
who
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King Tubby is one of the most

important figures of Jamaican
popular music.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s,
Tubby was responsible for turning dub
into an art form, the creative remixing he pioneered at a tiny frontroom studio in the Waterhouse ghetto
making a long-reaching impact. Like
L AT E S T S TO R I E S
his friend and sometime rival, Lee

NOW READING: A beginners guide to King Tubby, the producer who
Scratch turned...
Perry, Tubby was one of a
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5/22/15, 12:59 AM
CURRENT
handful of Jamaican visionaries whose

innovations not only changed the
shaped of reggae in unprecedented
ways, but which also formed a
(http://www.factmag.com/2015/05/19/kingtemplate for so much contemporary
tubby-beginnersmusic production, be it in rap and
guide-dub-reggae/)
A beginner's guide to
hip-hop, jungle, garage and grime, or
King Tubby
various forms of electronic dance
(http://www.factmag.com/2015/05/19/kingtubby-beginnersmusic especially dubstep, the
guide-dub-reggae/)
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British bastard offspring of Jamaican

dub.
Greatly misunderstood, and
sometimes under-represented in
music literature, King Tubby was not a
(http://www.factmag.com/2015/05/21/hudsonstandard record producer until very

mohawke-played-asecret-dj-set-in-alate in his life, and his regular
chewbacca-costume/)
occupation was providing
Hudson Mohawke did a
secret DJ set in a
transformers to stabilise the electrical
Chewbacca costume
current of island businesses and
(http://www.factmag.com/2015/05/21/hudsonmohawke-played-asound systems alike. Nevertheless,
secret-dj-set-in-athe remix culture we take for granted
chewbacca-costume/)
today is largely reliant on Tubbys

ingenuity, the techniques he
introduced indelibly changing the way
contemporary popular music is made
and issued.
He was born Osbourne Ruddock in
1941 and was raised with three
brothers and four sisters close to the
Kingston Harbour on High Holborn
Street, one of the more prominent
roads on the eastern edge of
downtown. Then, in the early 1950s,
he moved with his mother to 18
Dromilly Avenue, in the Penwood
section of Waterhouse, an expansive
area of western Kingston, where a
number of new housing developments
had recently been built. Compared to
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5/22/15, 12:59 AM
the serious overcrowding of

downtown, Penwood must have felt
like a step up in the world. Yet, the
neighbourhood would later become
another flashpoint district, once
politically-motivated violence
became a serious issue.
Rather than referring to his waistline
(which was definitely slim), the
nickname Tubby stems from his
mothers surname, Tubman. He
developed an interest in electronics in
his teen years, and studied the subject
at the College of Arts, Science and
Technology in uptown Kingston,
supplementing his knowledge
through correspondence courses from
the USA. He began building radios
from discarded parts salvaged from
business rubbish tips, and soon
opened an electrical repair shop at the
rear of his mothers home. In addition
to the transformer work he later did
at the premises, Tubby began building
and servicing amplifiers for local
sound systems there, and in 1958 he
established one himself, an initially
small set known as Hometown Hi-Fi,
which played American rhythm and
blues music, and only appeared at
select local venues in the early days.
Nevertheless, its popularity led to the
crowning of King Tubby following a
Waterhouse sound clash in the early
60s, and towards the end of that
decade, once U Roy became the sets
star toaster, King Tubbys Hi-Fi
shifted gears and moved into the
major league. His sound system was
also the first to unleash reverb on the
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5/22/15, 12:59 AM
general public a major sonic

innovation at the time. Tragically, the
sound was destroyed by police in 1975,
their hostile actions a terrible affront.
From the mid-1950s, Tubby acted as a
mentor to his younger neighbour,
Lloyd Jammy James (who lived a few
chains down at number 92), and
according to Jammy, he briefly
operated a pirate radio station during
the ska years (called TRS, for Tubbys
Radio Station), but dismantled it
when soldiers were dispatched to find
the source, since the stations
emissions clashed with those of the
mainstream Jamaica Broadcasting
Corporations radio frequency. Tubby
and Jammy would remain extremely
close in the decades that followed
even when Jammy eventually decided
to become a rival producer himself.
Because so little was documented at
the time, King Tubbys early
involvement in music has sometimes
been misrepresented. Tubbys
nephew recently clarified that
although he maintained equipment at
Duke Reids Treasure Isle studio
during the late 60s, he was not an
apprentice engineer or staff dub
cutter there, as has often been stated.
Additionally, legend has it that Tubby
was present when soundman Rudolph
Ruddy Redwood had resident
engineer Byron Smith mix off some
exclusives for his sound system, on
which the vocal was inadvertently
removed, paving the way for the
phenomenon of version B-sides, in
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5/22/15, 12:59 AM
which previously recorded vocal songs

would have their rhythm tracks
removed for alternate instrumental
versions or toasting deejay cuts
though Tubby once claimed he was
the first to do this himself. In either
case, Tubby acquired a two-track tape
machine which he began using to mix
versions as exclusive acetates for
sound systems. The singer Pat Kelly,
who was an audio engineer for Tubby
in the early days, says he was working
at King Tubbys from perhaps as early
as 1969, though others have
questioned Kellys memory.
Things definitely stepped up a notch
after Bunny Lee helped Tubby acquire
an obsolete MCI mixing desk from
Dynamic Sounds in 1971, leading
Tubby to turn the front room at 18
Dromilly Avenue into a remix studio,
adding delay and reverb to the
version B-sides he was mixing, thus
creating dub as we now know it. Soon
the most important independent
record producers with no studios of
their own were beating a path to his
door, with Niney the Observer, Lee
Scratch Perry, Keith Hudson, Yabby
You and Augustus Pablo being among
the most noteworthy to benefit from
the Tubby treatment. From 1972, the
space was regularly used for the
voicing of rhythm tracks as well,
though it was not big enough for a full
band to record there. According to
Cornell Campbell, who claims his
rendition of Never Found A Girl was
the first song voiced at the premises,
Tubby was initially reluctant to record
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5/22/15, 12:59 AM
artists there, but after hearing the

results, and with encouragement
from Bunny Lee, he built a voicing
booth in a converted bathroom for
that very purpose. It then became
standard practice for the independent
producers to bring their unvoiced
rhythm tracks to Tubbys studio for
voicing, as well as to have their dub
versions mixed there.
King Tubby was also instrumental in
making the dub album a viable format
for release, leading to the growing
overseas popularity of the form
during the mid-70s. Yet, the limited
nature of Tubbys recording
equipment has stimulated much
debate over the years. An important
element of the mixing desk was its
high-pass filter, which Tubby used to
dynamic effect on many of his
greatest dubs. And it was always a
team of engineers that were working
there, rather than just Tubby himself.
In the early days of his studio, singer
Pat Kelly was one of the resident
engineers on an on-off basis, but he
was replaced by Philip Smart in late
1973; when Smart subsequently
migrated to the USA, it led to a
temporary return for Kelly, until
Prince Jammy came back to Jamaica in
early 76 to become Tubbys righthand man. Towards the end of the
70s, the young Scientist became
another important apprentice, and
Peter Chemist and Professor
engineered some fine records at
Tubbys in the early 80s too.
Page 6 of 9
5/22/15, 12:59 AM
Meanwhile, Jammy was in the process

of breaking away from Tubby, setting
up his own studio at his home in
nearby St Lucia Road. The massive
success Jammy had with the Casiodriven Under Mi Sleng Teng in 1985
convinced Tubby to upgrade his studio
and the make the shift to computerdriven digital beats. However, once
the studio was up and running, Tubby
took even more of a backseat role with
the actual productions, leaving
associates such as Peego, Phantom
and Fatman Thompson to conduct the
majority of his sessions. The end
result was that he was often in
Jammys shadow in the early digital
phase, though he scored some
noteworthy hits of his own too.
King Tubbys life was cut tragically
short on 6 February 1989, the victim
of another senseless murder. The
unidentified gunman took cash,
jewellery, and most notably, Tubbys
licensed firearm, which was probably
the reason he was targeted in the first
place. Though Tubbys murder struck
a terrible blow for reggae, the music
he made is truly immortal. What
follows are ten supreme examples of
wonderful work to surface from King
Tubbys studio, conceived and mixed
by the King himself, along with some
of his closest peers.
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A Beginner's Guide To King Tubby

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A beginner's guide to King Tubby

King Tubby is one of the most

his friend and sometime rival, Lee